Diminished chords pull in a certain tonal direction, while augmented chords tend to sound aimless and obscure—which can add a nice mood to tired progressions that might be boring or uninspiring.

To add even more character to these chords from the first tip on this list.

Diminished and augmented chords don’t show up in popular music that often, which is exactly why you should be using them!

Say no to boring chords!

6. Add suspensions and anticipations

Suspensions and anticipations are easy ways to add some tension and drama into your music and encourage some new and inspiring ideas into your process.

Anticipations are non-chord tones that eventually resolve into a chord.

Suspensions are tones left over from previous chords.

Listen to the last two chords in the verse chord progression of Radiohead’s “Exit Music (from a film).” The the 4th (D) in the Asus4 chord resolves down to the 3rd (C#) of the A chord, a classic 4-3 suspension.

7. See the bigger picture behind your music with Roman Numerals

Roman numeral analysis lets you see how the chords you’re playing interact with one another in a powerful way.

Why is this important?

Well, adding symbols to your chords gives you a better understanding of the relationship between chords in certain keys.

Let’s take a look at all the chords in the key of G Major for example:

G Major, A minor, B minor, C Major, D Major, E minor, F# Diminished

By adding Roman Numerals to each chord, we can assign major, minor and diminished symbols:

I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, vii°

These symbols don’t just represent the order of chords for the key of G Major but of all major keys.

This means that the sound of the good ol’ I-IV chord relationship will be the same in every major key you play it in.

Get a good grasp of the relationships between chords. It will help you figure out how to shape and order your music more easily during your process.

More theory, more ideas.

Theory doesn’t have to be boring. In fact, these simple music theory exercises are just inspiration in disguise.

Remember, while music theory can be a huge help in your songwriting, there’s no rules for how you use it. Nothing is better than your ears and musical intuition when it comes to music-making.

Next time you can’t find that creative spark, try some simple theory exercises and see what happens—At the very least you’ll be expanding your repertoire